Circle in the Sky

Kelsey sat in her Volvo sedan, clicking through channels on her radio, even if she only had four to choose from nowadays. She had smooshed her car into the back of a triangular parking lot designed to cram three cars into the space of only Kelsey’s. Combing her fingers through her coarse strawberry blonde hair which saddled a round face with a somewhat pointed chin and squeezing her eyebrows together, she floated her head up naturally as she ballooned her lungs with air. Kelsey wondered who in the Godless land of California supplied a toddler with crayons and a map of LA and told it to lay out all the parking lots. Seeing the tiny, electric car next to her, she wondered if it might be her vehicle that was the problem. It didn’t matter, she couldn’t afford a new car, even thinking about how much she saved living right above a liquor store. All just another reason to loathe LA city planners, she thought while shimming out of the slit she was able to make of her door.

Kelsey looked up to see all the gaudiness of a chandelier tubed up in the rainbow neon letters above a glass door screeching “Rent-a-VR”. The door pulled open like dragging a push broom, tinkling the cracked tin bell only once. No one was behind the counter. The building was probably once a barbershop but was currently an arcaded husk lined by two rows of chairs each with VR headsets attached to a hinge. There were three other people speckled around the Walmart LED lit room. The first two seats near the door were empty, because mugging someone that had their head strapped to a screen was easy.

Kelsey chose to sit in the row with only one person. She also tried to choose a chair with only a little black on the edges of the armrest. The middle was never black because of all the sweaty hands squeegeeing away the dirt previously. She pulled out her nearly dead iPhone with worn down edges, the burning battery sucking sweat out of her palms even before the armrest could.

“Why won’t this damned thing go through?” she whispered to the white screen on the side of the chair.

“If you are having trouble paying, please check your bank account balance, or if your MyPay app is not fully updated, please do so now,” it said.

“Could be either.”

She headed back to the car. Having almost scratched the tiny two door next to her, Kelsey plugged her phone in and began flipping through notifications. She tapped on an article titled “Tiny Black Spot Seen Through James Webb Telescope”. She skim skipped through the article picking out the phrases: missing stars, scientists unsure, black wave, no cause for alarm etc.

She kept on flicking for another minute, her eyes filming over as she began to lift her head with the sun. Her mind addled around to the image of a rooster cock-a-doodling on a red barn overlooking a sash of yellow flowers draped over green hills. A dirt road led up to it, like a roll of uncut ribbon, and a pleasant white house with crystal glass windows near it. A man walked out onto the porch, and turning back, embraced a woman she knew to be herself. As he stepped off to the day’s chores, two children ran out after him, waving goodbye.

Bam! A homeless man had just left a face sized dent in her hood. Kelsey felt her heart punching her seat, and her arms fastened like bolts to the steering wheel. Then as if to calm her, the gas pedal gently nudged her foot back. She thanked the universe this wouldn’t show up in everyones’ feed today.

“Hey, you alright?” she asked through the crack of her door.

He swore at her, mumbling about the stars.

She glanced back to the sun. Then she sat for a moment.

“Screw this.”

She dented the car next to her with the swing of her door and walked across the street to the edge of a steep decline with a swath of pine trees below. Phone and keys together plummeted into the dark green mess as Kelsey headed east.

The first hour was joy tinted white by the sun, while the moon lay across the thin empty sky, recasting the sun’s holy effusions to lands beyond its reach. Kelsey walked down streets with quiet houses covered in dust caked solid by the sun, looked up at tress suspending a school of glittering green and white leaves, and felt the keeling sidewalk rock her back and forth through thin Converse sneakers. Eventually, after continually turning towards whichever way would keep her under the sun’s arc, the hum of engines and growl of tires berated her. She exited the neighborhood to see a gas station on her left and and a family huddled just outside its entrance along with a few other people scattered around scratching nervously at their phones. The mother screamed.

“Oh my god, we have to go, we have to right now!”

Her husband grabbed her phone, while she snatched at her children's limbs and heads, stumbling, she hoped, towards their car. The other people had only been distracted for an instant before snapping back to their own phones, only to cry out and vaguely catch at what they needed to do. Kelsey reached for hers, just to have them hand be swallowed up by the gullet of her empty pocket. Static filled her body and pixelated her eyes before she began moving to a tall man with brown hair, who seemed to be keeping his head.

“Hey, excuse me, I lost my phone, what’s happening? Do you know?”

“Huh? I think they’re saying it’s a hole, or something, black wave of dark matter, I don’t know. Just go west, go west they say.”

“How fast is it coming?”

“How fast? Speed of light I think. You need a ride? I’m leaving right now.”

“Isn’t west just the ocean?”

“Yeah, I guess, it’s just what they said to do. I’m leaving. You coming?”

“Will it help?” she asked.

He stood a moment, then turned quickly.

Kelsey was walking towards a big black circle in the sky. The sun was a little white orb that poked inside it, like the eyelet in a mask. The black had been tangent to the horizon, right at the point where the road ended, but now it seemed to consume miles of the earth’s imperceptible curve. The sun was approaching its tenth hour. She looked down to see and feel the light bouncing back at her face from the asphalt. She lolled her tired head around slowly only to tighten up as a rod shot up her spine and into her neck; the little white orb was gone. Stars glinted then disappeared all along the edge of the circle. The only way to see was by the fugitive light of the moon, a refugee from its native land of vivacious plasma. Almost half the sky was black, empty like a crib built but never used, and only timid twinkling defied the circle. She turned back, wondering if it was worth heading to the moon and the ocean, like everyone else.

“No, I chose to go a different way this morning. It would only matter by seconds anyway.”

She faced the circle and continued on.